Thread: FryingMan's DILD course workbook

ADA/RC is definitely a challenge but I'm going to really try to keep it up since I think it may be the real deal for maximum lucids.

Do you mean the time it takes or some other aspect?

On the notes recommendation I just meant to try to remember what you are doing day and night but all of the note taking and focus can happen during the day as long as you are still facing sleep challenges.

It's a challenge to keep a pearl of awareness constantly focused on noticing and evaluating the RC (in my case, location). I frequently notice that I have dropped the ADA "feeling" and re-established it, along with a physical RC whenever this happened, all through the day. Because in dreams location changes a lot (for me), so I'm also focusing in particular on staying highly aware through transitions (going through doors, whenever anything changes like what street I'm walking down, crossing the street, etc.). I assume the more I do it the more second nature it will become.

Like just now, several times upon waking this morning I "automatically" restored the ADA/RC location sense, which I think is a good sign .

On other news, nice sleep & dream night last night! All NDs, a variety of fairly short scenes, but the best thing is: wakings at 3:50, 6:19, 8, 9:43.

Note all the successful return to sleeps after 5 hours, 3 of them! I think my mental adjustment to not become frustrated at distractions really helped.

It took me a while to return to sleep at the 6:19 I think (or the 3:50 don't recall which), but I kept at it, kept focusing on relaxing. Eventually I got into a groove where I was quite sleepy at the 8 and 9:43, and I could have kept on sleeping but need to start my day.

Woohoo, that's the kind of sleep/dream night I want, wakings-schedule-wise. Also, *tons* of HI, just a huge bunch of it. I tried grabbing it once in a while but it still didn't work . Also felt some rocking sensations around 8h I think but I will not allow myself to "impromptu WILD", I'm focused on DILD now. I did quick mantras before falling asleep again, "the next thing I see is a dream," and "I'm dreaming," but not working hard on visualizations and not doing it for very long.

Actually quite a successful to-sleep night as I battled waking life thoughts, there are very traumatic things going on in my extended family (cousins), and I probably will be making a slightly-risky change of job soon, but I was able to let these thoughts drain out of me and focus just on relaxation and breathing "dream gas" which will "put me to sleep in seconds."

Confidence in getting back to sleep will lead to less stress and break the vicious insomnia cycle.

It's interesting: the longer I sleep, the sleeper I become upon wakings it seems, making it easier to just keep going right BTB.

I am sorry to hear about your extended family! Your success is even more amazing with those different things going on. You have a great game plan coupled with quick adjustments as needed putting you are on the fast track. Congrats on a good night! Did you see this thread about a similar constant ADA/RC that focuses on breathing and blinking?... http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...ml#post2062916

It made me think whether or not I would really want to always be lucid or semi-lucid while dreaming. That specific post in the link put it as the "main downside" to being always lucid...not long ago I thought such thoughts were a joke but I can better imagine sentiment now. Maybe a good question for Hukif to see if he sees it as a downside. Let me know what he says if you decide to ask or if you want me to ask.

Last night just OK, I thought it was going to be another gangusters night like 2 nights ago with lots of wakings and dreams but it ended up just a mediocre night, not terrible but not great. Handful of short dream scenes. Had to get up before I was ready to at 7 hours, had another cycle in me I think that I had to miss. Tried a nap 2 hours later and got deeply relaxed and may have hit some NREM but no recall.

I drank some St. John's Wort tea before bed, dutchraptor (and other places on the net) says it gives vivid, kind of bizarre dreams. Didn't notice it did anything other than perhaps made dream recall suffer slightly. So another "magical" supplement bites the dust. Either that or my supply is not potent any more, or I didn't take enough (two teaspoons of mixed "bits").

Edit: those guys have been LDing for *decades*. Yeah, maybe after 6,000+ LDs all night long it gets old after ten years. I will very gladly take that heavy burden upon myself immediately and let you know how it is in 20 years .

In the worst case there's 5-HTP and melatonin and other REM-suppressors to make sure one gets at least some dream-free time during the night.

You have a great game plan coupled with quick adjustments as needed putting you are on the fast track

I sure hope so! In addition to determination and persistence, honestly self-evaluating and figuring out how to fix something that's broken (several bad sleep streaks in my case, on a few occasions) is of key importance in LD training. And nobody can do it for you since it's all in your head! Of course nowadays there are lots of resources like this great place that can help a lot. "Things not working out? Quitcherbitchin' and find a way to get past it!" That's what I keep telling myself.

ADA/RC (location) in its 4th day now I think. Still need to constantly re-establish it, but the good news is I don't go very long without noticing I've let it drop.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

"Things not working out? Quitcherbitchin' and find a way to get past it!" That's what I keep telling myself.

Love it. You don't strike me as someone that needs to remind yourself of that too much but I think we could all use that advice from time to time!

Well thanks for the vote of confidence . I tend to swing back and forth between positives and negatives fairly easily though.

Kind of a mixed bag last night. About 2.5 hours wakefulness in the middle of the night thanks to stupid argument over snoring (mostly my fault. Remember, your wife is always right, magic key to happiness). But then I slept in and had some pretty good and really wacky dreams, unfortunately not up to my highest level of recall detail but definitely amusing / bizarre.

Probably the best part was being a jedi conquerer of a planet and realizing before addressing the entire planet on TV that I had no pants on . Either that or trying to take a picture of the evil shark-monster faced killer whale baby that was chasing me through a ship .

Day (5?) of ADA/RC: location and had a hard time keeping the location awareness always on. Will keep at this for a good while since I think it may lead to the holy grail (lucid all night). And if location doesn't work I'll try something else. In fact, I'm doing location + especially noting any and all transitions (doors, turning from one street to another, entering and leaving a cross-walk, etc.).

Still also do RCs and RRCs every 20 minutes (using a dreaming RC app for that ), as well as when anything surprising or unusual happens.

Need to continue vigorously incubating my primary dreamsign as it seems to also now be an auto-lucid (3 for 3 of the last times it came up).

Rehearsing what to do if the visuals go out again: rub hands, look at feet, spin, shake whole body, do a full body pat-down up and down: chest, legs, head, etc. , dive through the ground, etc. Do SOMETHING with the dream body other than just stand their going "duh....." until I wake up. And imagine the last place I was (or the place I want to be) the whole time.

couple recent djs from this week:

00:00 Monday 2013-11-25, nice recall! - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

00:00 Wednesday 2013-11-27 - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

forgot to post the most recent lucid! just did:

LD #9, tried to light the twilight but instead lost visuals - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

You are doing quite a few different great things. Does it feel like too much? I believe Hukif told me that it took him a long time to get to where he is and to get the constant ADA/RC going. There will likely be ups and downs but if you can maintain some type of practice throughout, it will create an overall uptrend in your abilities as I am sure you have already seen. Doing the RC/RRC every 20 minutes makes it more likely that your awareness will pop up in your dreams but be careful that it doesn't become rote and make sure that it still has meaning each time. I do it randomly averaging one per hour but I also have other triggers (similar to some of yours) during which I do a more simple awareness check.

Interesting night last night. Wakeful at about 4:46, just felt no sleepiness at all after journaling (sucks because I was sleepy before journaling). Tried my usual relaxation techniques but just had no drowsiness to tap into, so, after 30 minutes, there's only one thing to do, I got up, thinking I'll do a proper WBTB. Sat in a rocking chair for about 20 minutes, visualizing dreams with my #1 dream sign, reinforcing "I'm dreaming" with each scene. Move to the kitchen and warm up some milk. Drink it and sit there a bit more. After about a total of 40 minutes up, move back to bed, and tap into some drowsiness and fall asleep and dreamt some more, I knew I had an alarm set at 07:30 (about 1 sleep cycle away) and that knowledge usually keeps me up, but this time I slept and dreamt some more! And pretty wacky ones too, I'll DJ later today or tomorrow since I'm cooking all day today .

Anyway, LD#10: (double digits dream count at last!) most solid, visually vivid/realistic (had to RC once in the middle to confirm I was still dreaming) LD yet, perhaps the longest, certainly tied for it. Summoned a blast of fire to zap the endlessly multiplying puffy disgusting juicy freaky spiders filling up my room that got me lucid in the first place, how's that for thanks!?

And now for the firsts

+ first time full-body pat-down stabilization. I just read about this on DV and practiced visualizing it a few times. I really like this idea! It made me aware of my full dream body and I think really solidified my place in the dream. I also counted to 5, as I practiced a few times. Happy that memory made it in.

+ first time seeing dream-body other than hands: looked down to see chest and abdomen, and ... well, you know . My dream body is in pretty good shape!

+ first time lucidly summon fire blast: it was about 1/2 transparent and didn't light the room on fire but saw it . Summon lightning bolts didn't work though.

+ first time hand-behind-the-back DC summon (worked!)

It could have gone on I think for quite a bit longer but silly me closed my eyes on kissing my reluctant, summoned DC and faded to awake.

I'm not much of a drinker, so it's been mostly really easy to completely abstain from alcohol these last 3 months. However, I like a few glasses while cooking and eating Thanksgiving dinner. So to celebrate reaching a double-digit LD count this morning, I'm going to imbibe this evening. The nice thing is that I'll be quite the cheap drunk I'm sure, my tolerance must be zero or negative by now .

So while on the one hand I still have 3 LDs to go for my November goal and 3 nights left, I think I'll spend one of those nights, tonight, with my good buddy Scot(ch), he cousin who's quite a wine-er, and various other things sitting in bottles around the kitchen and the house . I can always double up on the 29th and 30th, right?

Well I did drink some, but not all that much, mostly a few snootfulls early while still cooking. Hardly felt drunk at all. By bedtime just felt full . Probably the combination of: getting to bed 2 hrs past normal, some alcohol in the system (I drank a liter of water before bed to flush things out), and a full stomach resulted in a poor recall night: 1 short dream scene, the rest barely recalled fragments. But I expected as much (hmmm...interesting wording there....you get what you expect?). Also didn't do much in the way of the normal dream recall/waking intention setting.

Bedtime: 02:00
wakings: 04:07 (frag), 07:40 (dream) (stayed awake until BTB)
BTB 09:20
wakings: 10:39 (frag), 11:52 (memory of a frag (a fragment-fragment?) but not detail).

I am happy to report that I got myself back to sleep at the 09:20 BTB (twice!) after being awake (but in bed) for most of 2 hours and not feeling all that drowsy. Kept at it for the practice and I really wanted to dream more. Not much sleepiness on tap to sink into using my relaxation breathing. But kept at it, focused entirely on just relaxing. Started feeling some "WILDish" noise and told myself right away "I am NOT trying to WILD." Made it to sleep, YAY!

I really love writing "I got back to sleep!" progress reports. I'm on a roll now I think with rising confidence supporting more and more successes. It's important to keep going with the program: daily exercise, eating well (and generally quite a bit less than my normal, which is generally too much), keeping a regular to-bed time.

Awesome FryingMan!! Congrats on a great #10!! Memory, stabilization, vividness, length, summoning!!! Nice work!!! And progress getting to sleep is huge to!

OK Well, 5/8 for November is not bad, I got the last 4 all in the last two weeks approximately so I finished the month at a 8/month rate at least. I'm going to up the goal to 12 for December. Maybe stretching it a bit but maybe not!

Another way to think of it: I doubled my LD count in November! Woohoo good way to think of it! Wouldn't mind that to keep up month to month!

Arrrrrgh! My #1 dreamsign (being in/around childhood home) dry spell ended last night, epically, taking a girl up to my childhood bedroom (I'm a young guy in a youth group in the dream), I show her the two twin beds in the room, told her when I slept in each one, showed her the shelves where all the board games were, sat down on one of the beds, held hands (it was sweet...)... so I spent a LOT of time in the room, pointing out details, by all rights should have gotten lucid as I'm still frequently working on visualizing becoming lucid there. Before last night I was 3/3 for becoming lucid when appearing there.

And I guess the crazy hillbillies cooking up "California Skunk" and bouncing chocolate truffles off the floor into cups on the table (playing "quarters") was somehow not weird enough to question...

Not to mention the water in the ocean disappearing suddenly revealing two whales swimming on the dry ocean bed, and all I can come up with is "wow, that's a really interesting illusion, does everyone see that?"

Yet more sleep success. I've been able to get back to sleep every single time I've tried recently except once I've reached 10-12 hours after bedtime. Sometimes it takes a while (10-15 minutes) but the multiple-hour wakefulness is now rare and looks like it's behind me at this point. Pretty frickin awesome! Like today: pretty wakeful at 07:20, but got back to sleep for *two* more entire sleep cycles with the best dreams of the night.

Also two nights ago, got back to sleep for late morning sleep cycles and had probably my most awesome and vivid flying dream yet (alllllllllllmost lucid, I realized I was exercising flying control, calling to a guide to help me how to fly vertically, etc.).

Nice progress and experiences

A good, solid month for you FryingMan! It seems like you might have gone with your gut feeling on setting your next goal. If so, it seems good to me! Definitely aggressive, but you are aggressively aiming to be one of the best, so it fits. Since you are doing well with getting back to sleep, you seem less likely to have to worry about burning out. Go with your gut

Speaking of going with your gut, my gut has gotten "going" on me now . I wondered when it was going to catch up with me . See, I made this awesome batch of homemade hot-sauce (Sriracha is just not available where I live, and the cheap knock-off I found once was a very poor replacement), and I've been enthusiastically consuming it. I like it hot and I made it hot. Sometimes when I overdo it on hot sauce I don't sleep well but so far no side effects....until this morning.

Challenging back-to-sleep this morning at about 6 hrs (2 hrs late for bedtime though, sigh), but *I did it*! I had fallen in to the temptation of daydreaming for probably 20-30 minutes and that tends to activate my mind and wake me up. I decided I wasn't done for the day so I resolved to sleep again. I don't know how long it took me, I changed positions at least 2-3 times so it may have been an hour, but I made it, and dreamed some more, 2 periods. I was very groggy at the first subsequent awakening and recall was light on some pretty detailed dreams I feel, and I got some sketchy but OK recall from the 2nd awakening when I decided to get up. Felt lots of rocking sensations on the first slow BTB, and some *very* active HI, almost fell into a WILD I think, I'd love to make that entry to Sageous's "What Happened" thread: "my mantra: 'I am not trying to WILD'". . I also have the beginnings of a cold (sore throat, stuffy nose) and my neck & shoulder are a bit sore....so all in all another sleep success. I had to constantly remind myself to "relax," running through some self-hypnosis phrases ("on each exhale you're getting more and more relaxed....deeper, .... deeper....more relaxed....more relaxed..."). It was a slow process, hard not to "watch" it happen but every time I caught myself paying attention I switched back to relaxing.

Edit: and though it is not among my current goals, I think this is the way I can approach WILDing eventually: keep to the "unconscious sleep" side of the balance, and slowly, carefully, each time while falling asleep ("not trying to WILD"), add just a touch more awareness until I find just the right amount that avoids wakefulness but makes it in to the dream aware.

Ugh picked up some sort of flu thing, started like a cold but temperature went up.
Managed a small bit of recall from late morning cycles

Sorry to hear about your flu or whatever it is! I am thinking I got some kind of cold overnight as well but it doesn't seem as bad (so far!). Congratulations on keeping yourself on the relaxation side of going back to sleep...that is a key whenever you find such challenges and I think that once you learn how to deal with it you should have less and less trouble combatting the issue. It seemed to be a bit of a process for me to but I wasn't smart enough to track what I was doing like you did, so I am not even sure what was the key for me besides making sure I don't wake up too much or too long. Anyway, get well soon!!

Doing better health-wise. Crazy big recall night 3 nights ago, last night barely squeaked out a 15 second dream from sheer stubbornness moving to the couch . So recall is all over the map these days.

big recall night - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

low recall night - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

That is a lot of recall! Impressive! And glad to hear that you are feeling better!

I think I feel pretty confident in saying getting back to sleep seems to be fixed now. I was determined to get back to sleep this morning after getting up for breakfast duty, reading some email, thinking a lot about the details of what may be a new job, etc. Tried to go back to sleep about an hour and a half later getting up and it was slooow. I couldn't decide: window open, window closed (fresh air/cooler vs. noise). Bed felt too hot. Big trucks going by too noisy, so probably 4 times I got up to open/close the window and adjust the fan. In the end put earplugs in and opened a 2ndary window.

Once I finally resolved to go to sleep, and at last let my daily life thoughts seep out into a "box" beside the table, and did my body/eyes/mind relaxation and self-hypnosis thing, I slept . Dreamed too but recall not great for some reason. And a second back-to-sleep also was for another good solid sleep cycle with many many things going on but only remembered a few scenes upon waking. Random wild and wacky! I feel really groggy from these late morning back to bed wakings, like I could keep sleeping all day! But I force myself up once afternoon hits

Dry week, it's now 1 week + 2 days since LD #10. Yes I'm starting to feel a little bit under pressure to produce lucids. Maybe it's just like paradoxical intent for sleep: you only sleep once you stop trying to sleep and just relax. I know with LD you must maintain the interest and the practice, but perhaps the pressure to LD is preventing them? I

I had a terrible thought, what if my self-hypnosis relaxation narration is keeping the LDs away? Hope not. And my "I'm not trying to WILD" thought that I think once in a while if noise comes along, to convince myself to stay away from watching myself attentively falling asleep and playing with the noise?

Basically I tell myself "With each breath I'm going deeper and farther into relaxation." "Tension is draining out of my body on every breath", etc. Before I do this I did do a lot of dreaming intention setting though, the typical "I remember every dream completely", and "I wake up after every dream, remain still, remember and record it", and some MILD based on recent dreams.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

I think I feel pretty confident in saying getting back to sleep seems to be fixed now. I was determined to get back to sleep this morning after getting up for breakfast duty, reading some email, thinking a lot about the details of what may be a new job, etc. Tried to go back to sleep about an hour and a half later getting up and it was slooow.

Waking life concerns can often wake your mind up too much, kind of shifting it into a different gear, but you did well to get back to sleep despite that! It definitely seems like you are still on the right track to get to sleep more quickly. Have you heard of the supposed health affects of sleeping well over 8 hours a day too often? I still do it, but mostly on the weekends.

Once I finally resolved to go to sleep, and at last let my daily life thoughts seep out into a "box" beside the table,..

I think this is definitely a key to getting back to sleep when daily life thoughts do creep in. I do something similar jotting down a quick note if it is something I am worried about forgetting or doing a mental "check-off." One of those two things usually lets me release such thoughts very quickly.

Dry week, it's now 1 week + 2 days since LD #10. Yes I'm starting to feel a little bit under pressure to produce lucids. Maybe it's just like paradoxical intent for sleep: you only sleep once you stop trying to sleep and just relax. I know with LD you must maintain the interest and the practice, but perhaps the pressure to LD is preventing them?

You definitely want to keep your interest and practice going but perhaps try going towards your evening with the thought "if it happens, it happens." Ups and downs are normal. I was sure that I was going to WILD last night, got the vibrations and thought that I woke up before entering the dream but now I am quite sure that I woke into an FA and probably quickly "fell asleep" from the FA and continued into an ND from there because I have no recollection of laying awake trying to get back to sleep. A little later some waking life fun kind of ended any further attempts, but waking life takes precedence and perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing that you took time in the morning to think about a potential new job.

I had a terrible thought, what if my self-hypnosis relaxation narration is keeping the LDs away? Hope not. And my "I'm not trying to WILD" thought that I think once in a while if noise comes along, to convince myself to stay away from watching myself attentively falling asleep and playing with the noise?

I doubt it is keeping the LDs away, especially if you were using it when you got all of those LDs last month..? As far as the "not trying to WILD" mindset, it seems like it has helped you to get back to sleep which is crucial for any kind of LDs.